Governor should sign historic groundwater bill

The most important water legislation in California this year isn't the $7.5 billion water bond voters will decide in November. It's the historic package of bills approved Friday by the Legislature designed to regulate for the first time the pumping of groundwater. Gov. Jerry Brown should sign the legislation, which gives the state a crucial tool to ensure a long-term adequate water supply.

Central Valley farmers have fought groundwater regulation for years, wanting to hold on to the right to be able to pump as much water from the wells underneath their land as they needed to water their crops. It's a reasonable strategy if the state had an unlimited supply of water. Every other Western state except California realized the folly of that approach years ago.

In a normal year, agriculture generates about 40 percent of its water from pumping groundwater. But the drought has desperate California farmers digging hundreds of new wells and pumping at record rates, generating about 65 percent of their supplies from groundwater this year. Reserves are shrinking by 800 billion gallons a year, some wells have gone dry, and groundwater levels throughout the Central Valley are at their lowest levels in more than a century.

The package of bills gives local water agencies the power to ensure the amount of water pumped does not exceed current levels. The legislation also provides the tools necessary to begin restoring aquifers, something that the Santa Clara Valley Water District wisely had the foresight to accomplish nearly 50 years ago through the use of a pump tax. If any individual water agencies cannot act responsibly, the state would have the power to step in and force appropriate action.

The same Central Valley ag interests that created the problem fought the solution to the end, saying the bills create another level of unnecessary bureaucracy and threatens to make a bad drought even worse. Their lack of foresight highlights an important aspect of the current water debate.

Regulating groundwater is only a first significant step in managing the state's limited water supply. The water bond could provide additional storage that would help California survive future droughts. But it won't provide nearly enough water if farmers, whose crops gulp down 80 percent of the state's usable water, continue to expand their efforts to grow crops on marginal land and demand additional supplies of water.

California wouldn't need to impose mandatory limits on urban water users if farmers would stop making irresponsible choices of the crops they choose to grow. Farmers have doubled the amount of water-intensive almond orchards in the last decade, despite knowing they didn't have the water rights to irrigate the trees during a drought.

Californians are just beginning to understand the challenge of managing their limited water supply. The historic groundwater legislation is a major step in the right direction.